From marrying at the age of 17 to pranking the family by calling Bharti Singh his second wife; Sudesh Lehri and wife Mamta's love story, struggles and more

Sudesh Lehri has been a renowned name in the Industry, he is well-known for his comic timing. The actor and comedian went for Bharti Singh and Haarsh Limbachiyaa's podcast. For the first, Sudesh's wife Mamta made an appearance. In a candid conversation, Sudesh opened up about his early struggles, their marriage and the amount of love the duo shares. While sharing a funny incident, Bharti revealed that they had pranked Sudesh ji's family members too.

People have a love marriage, we have a hate marriage. So we had an arranged marriage only. She is my brother's sister-in-law. So I was 17 and she was 15 when we got married. We were really small, and I got influenced by friends, I had refused to get married. Then one day I told my family 'shaadi karni hai toh abhi karo.'

So I was with my father in the gold business, I had learnt a little and I used to earn 100-200 rupees every day. So in those days, 100 rupees is also a big thing. And I don't drink or smoke, I am vegetarian so the family was quite impressed with me. So they did our roka and said, 'shaadi baad mein kar lena'.

I still remember it was Sunday when I told them I would marry right now or I won't marry. So my family called her from her cousin's wedding, took us to the temple and got us married. No band baja, no planning, nothing a simple wedding at 10 am in the temple and by 12 pm we were at home.

I was barely 15 years old, we didn't even speak once before the wedding so I got really tensed. But our engagement lasted for a year. Sudesh lauded his wife, "Jokes aside but if Billo wasn't there in my life as my wife then I wouldn't have become anything. She has been my biggest support."

I wanted to become an artist and would earn less than what I used to earn in gold work. But we decided to separate from our family and started living in a rented house. Those were our really struggling days. We didn't even have money for a burner so we used to make a diya out of the ghee box and make tea on it. We used to borrow utensils from the landlord and cook our food.

Bharti and I had pranked Billo's relatives. Bharti was in college and I used to go there to teach. We had a shoot and we directly went to my place. Billo's relatives had come home so Bharti pranked them by saying that she was my second wife and she created a huge fight. But we had told Billo about it. (Bharti and Sudesh recalled the fight.) Billo's sister had started crying, later we told her that we were just joking.

We had a huge fight once, we were 18-19 year old and we would hide our fights. When I was 25, I saw another life and I kept wondering whether I made a mistake marrying early. And then others also meddle in your life. So once we had a huge fight and I left home. We had our kids at that time and someone instigated me to sell my house. And like a fool, I acted in front of Billo and I regret fighting with her. She honestly apologised and then I realised my mistake. I confessed to her and we decided to make our relationship stronger and we stopped having fights. I really love her a lot.

We both haven't studied in school, both of us haven't received formal education but we were destined to be together. She has been a strong pillar in my life, she is extremely emotional and innocent. If you all are liking me today it is all because of Billo. She understood my passion or if there was someone else and I would have continued to joke about my wife, she would have left me.

When we started getting shows I felt we accomplished. My cassette got hit but I wasn't earning a penny. I had a lot of fame but I had no money, I had to sell my houses, I sold my scooter for survival and we had gone back to our struggling days. But that world of show was completely different, when I got my cassette, I would go to all companies begging for work. They kept telling me to go to Tseries. I went there and I went inside, gave them my cassette and they liked it. They asked how much would I charge. First, they gave me hope and the next day denied it.

I was heartbroken, then I made a new cassette and Tseries released it. That turned out a huge hit but I didn't have any shows. Much later I realised that my matter was more for Hindi and that is why all local publishers pushed me to go there. I used to imitate the Hindi singers back then.